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The Middle Colonies
| | | | New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware were called the Middle colonies. The Middle colonies were between New England and the Southern colonies. These colonies were settled mainly by English, French, Dutch and German people. They developed the region into a rich farming area.
Penn's woods. Like Roger Williams, William Penn believed in religious toleration. He founded the colony of Pennsylvania for that purpose.
Penn came from a worthy family in England. His father was an admiral in the English Navy and a friend of the King. As a young man, Penn joined a religious group called the Society of Friends. The Friends, or Quakers, as they called themselves, believed in the goodness of all people. They also refused to fight in any wars.
Like the Pilgrims and Puritans, the Quakers were not allowed to practice their religion in England.
In 1681 William Penn made an agreement with the English King. Penn's father had died in 1670, and the King had owed him a lot of money. Now he owed that money to William Penn. As a payment for the debt, he gave Penn some land in America.
In 1681 Penn sent settlers to this land. He called this land Pennsylvania, which means "Penn's woods". It was a beautiful land of thick forests, rich soil and clean rivers.
William Penn worked hard to build up Pennsylvania. He wrote advertisements telling people in Europe about his colony. Soon people from Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland and other countries came to Pennsylvania. Unlike New England, where most of the colonists were English, Pennsylvania was settled by people of many different nations.
William Penn said that Pennsylvania would be a place open to settlers of all faiths. He also said that the American Indians should be treated well. Soon after arriving, Penn made up an agreement with the Delaware Indians who lived in the area.
He paid them a good price for their land. During Penn's lifetime the relations between the settlers and the Indians in Pennsylvania were very good.
Life in Philadelphia. Philadelphia was the first settlement in Pennsylvania. The name "Philadelphia" means "brotherly love" in Greek. For 300 years Philadelphia has been known as the City of Brotherly Love.
By the 1700's more than 4,500 people lived in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, Boston and New York were the three largest and most modern cities in the colonies.
In spite of being more than 160 kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean, Philadelphia was a busy sea- port. Ships sailed from the ocean up the broad Delaware River. The city's streets were full of traffic.
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